Quote of the Day: “Often, the best explanation for ‘the good old days’ is a bad memory.” – Steven Pinker
Photo: by Milivoj Kuhar
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
What does one do on seeing an animal in distress? If you’re former Aussie rugby player Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins, you go right to its aid.
In the viral video—which now has more than 16 million hits on Twitter—Nick switches on the emergency lights of his car, then jumps out and runs to help a black and white sheep entangled in a barbed-wire fence.
The sheep is having difficulty freeing itself, so Nick calms the distressed animal, then works at separating its horns from the wire.
The sheep is free. Now Nick just has the not-so-easy task of getting the animal away from road traffic and back in its field.
“Usually, they go into a sort of hypnotized state when you have them like this,” Nick says to his friend as he holds onto the sheep’s hooves.
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He lifts the animal safely over the fence, and it runs baa-ing across the field.
Nick yells, “You’re welcome!” right back.
(WATCH the animal rescue video below.)
Incredible pic.twitter.com/7z1D8XCvYl
— Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) September 22, 2021
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A dementia suffering pianist whose spontaneous composition went viral last year has fulfilled a lifelong dream of conducting a symphony orchestra—which played his own songs.
81-year-old Paul Harvey became well-known last September after his son Nick had recorded him improvising a two-minute piece from four notes—F natural, A, D, and B natural—and posted the footage on Twitter.
Nick posted the clip online to show how musical ability can survive memory loss ,and Paul captured the hearts of the British nation when he played the piano from his home in Sussex live on the television.
It was recorded by BBC Philharmonic orchestra as a single, with proceeds going to the Alzheimer’s Society and Music for Dementia, which campaigns for people with the condition to have free access to music as part of their care.
To mark a year since he played his composition on breakfast tv, Paul was invited to conduct the BBC Philharmonic orchestra playing two of his compositions at the studio in Salford.
He spent an emotional afternoon with the orchestra, during which he conducted both Four Notes, while his son Nick played the piano, and an older composition of his called Where’s the Sunshine.
Four Notes - Paul’s Tune pic.twitter.com/T7f1OsfMIG
— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) October 26, 2020
Paul, a former music teacher and classical pianist, said, “It was magical, it was very, very special to work with such wonderful musicians.
“It made me feel alive, I couldn’t believe that an orchestra was playing my music and I was standing in front of it conducting them.
“I hadn’t conducted in such a long time before this, it was a real thrill.”
Paul was born in Stoke-on-Trent and studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music.
He became a composer—his Rumba Toccata is still used in grade 6 piano exams—and a concert pianist, appearing on the BBC Home Service in 1964.
But he decided to become a music teacher shortly before his eldest son Nick was born.
He spent 20 years teaching at the Imberhorne school, a comprehensive in East
Grinstead whose former pupils include Cutting Crew’s Nick Van Eede, famed for his hit ballad (I just) Died in Your Arms.
Five years ago, Paul moved into sheltered accommodation as part of his dementia care.
Nick, who joined Paul on the trip—organized by Music For Dementia—said he had seen his dad “come alive again” since the video of him playing piano went viral.
And he supported calls for music to be a key part of dementia sufferer’s care.
He said, “It moved dad and me and my two brothers beyond compare.
“It was a dream come true for dad to conduct and play with the an orchestra of that calibre as an 81 year old. It’s what dreams are made of.
“It was like an out-of-body experience.
“My dad is still reeling, he was having memories of what had happened over the last few days.
“His short term memory is generally shot to pieces but when big events like this happen it’s like a branding iron on his brain.
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“From my experience with dad, the right piece of music at the right time can be absolutely incredible.
“You don’t have to be a talented musician to enjoy it though. Just listening to music, it starts to trigger memories of the past and gives people that connection.
“Dad was having a particularly bad day at the time. It was fascinating how getting dad at the piano at that time brought dad back to me.
“For the first time in years he has got active again. It really brought him back to life again. He’s playing the piano more than he has in the eight years.”
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Campaign Director at Music for Dementia, Grace Meadows said, “It was magical and moving and wonderful to watch him be in his element.
“Seeing Paul the musician seeing beyond his diagnosis and have the contact with the musicians was a wonderful thing. It was very emotional.”
(WATCH Paul in action in the BBC video below.)
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They’ve famously survived the vacuum of space, and even returned to life after being frozen for decades in Antarctic moss. But as hard as it is to kill the bizarre microscopic animal, the tardigrade, it’s harder to find one fossilized. In fact, only two have ever been discovered and formally named—until now.
Lead researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Harvard University have described just the third fossil tardigrade on record—a new genus and species Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus gen. et sp. nov. (Pdo. chronocaribbeus), which is fully preserved in 16-million-year-old Dominican amber from the Miocene.
Measured at just over half a millimeter, the specimen has been identified as a relative of the modern living tardigrade superfamily, Isohypsibioidea, and represents the first tardigrade fossil recovered from the Cenozoic, the current geological era beginning 66 million years ago.
Researchers say the pristine specimen is the best-imaged fossil tardigrade to date— capturing micron-level details of the eight-legged invertebrate’s mouthparts and needle-like claws 20-30 times finer than a human hair. The new fossil is deposited at the American Museum of Natural History Division of Invertebrate of Zoology.
“The discovery of a fossil tardigrade is truly a once-in-a-generation event,” said Phil Barden, senior author of the study and assistant professor of biology at New Jersey Institute of Technology. “What is so remarkable is that tardigrades are a ubiquitous ancient lineage that has seen it all on Earth, from the fall of the dinosaurs to the rise of terrestrial colonization of plants. Yet, they are like a ghost lineage for paleontologists with almost no fossil record. Finding any tardigrade fossil remains is an exciting moment where we can empirically see their progression through Earth history.”
“At first glance, this fossil appears similar to modern tardigrades due to its relatively simple external morphology,” said Marc A. Mapalo, lead author of the study and graduate student at Harvard’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. “However, for the first time, we’ve visualized the internal anatomy of the foregut in a tardigrade fossil and found combinations of characters in this specimen that we don’t see in living organisms now. Not only does this allow us to place this tardigrade in a new genus, but we can now explore evolutionary changes this group of organisms experienced over millions of years.”
Tardigrades, or water bears, are renowned for their unusual appearance and self-preservation abilities—certain species are known to survive extreme conditions by curling into a dehydrated ball and entering a state of suspended animation where their metabolism is virtually paused, known as cryptobiosis.
Rare tardigrade fossil finds such as Pdo. chronocaribbeus, the team suggests, could provide new molecular estimates that offer fresh insight into major evolutionary events that have shaped the more than 1,300 species found across the planet today, such as the miniaturization of their body plan into one of Earth’s smallest-known animals with legs.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in unearthing tardigrade fossils, however, is their size.
“It’s a faint speck in amber,” said Barden. “In fact, Pdo. chronocaribbeus was originally an inclusion hidden in the corner of an amber piece with three different ant species that our lab had been studying, and it wasn’t spotted for months.”
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Barden says tardigrades’ microscopic non-biomineralized bodies are also uniquely suited to preservation in amber derived from plant resin, which is capable of safely enveloping and preserving organisms as minute as water bears and even individual bacterium.
“This particular mode of fossilization helps explain the patchy fossil record,” explained Barden. “Fossil amber with arthropods trapped inside is only known from 230 million years ago to the present… that’s less than half of the history of tardigrades.”
While it is estimated that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropod lineages before the Cambrian 540 million years ago, only two definitive tardigrade fossils have formally been described, both from Cretaceous fossil deposits in North America.
To explore Pdo. chronocaribbeus andits place on the tardigrade ancestral tree, Mapalo used high-powered laser confocal fluorescence microscopy to finely image the specimen. The team then compared it across a range of morphological features associated with major tardigrade groups alive today—including key identifiers such as body surface, claws, buccopharyngeal apparatus, and egg morphology.
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“The fact that we had to rely on imaging techniques usually reserved for cellular and molecular biology shows how challenging it is to study fossil tardigrades,” said Javier Ortega-Hernandez, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard. “We hope that this work encourages colleagues to look more closely at their amber samples with similar techniques to better understand these cryptic organisms.”
The team’s analysis places Pdo. chronocaribbeus in one of three core classes of tardigrade, Eutardigadra, and makes it the first definitive fossil member of the superfamily called Isohypsibioidea—a diverse species that today inhabits aquatic and land environments and is typically characterized by their distinct claws that vary in size leg-to-leg.
The finding, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also puts a minimum age on the Isohypsibioidea family.
“We are just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding living tardigrade communities, especially in places like the Caribbean where they’ve not been surveyed,” said Barden. “This study provides a reminder that, for as little as we may have in the way of tardigrade fossils, we also know very little about the living species on our planet today.”
Source: New Jersey Institute of Technology
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The French firm that has taken an enzyme found in decomposing leaves and tweaked it, so it can decompose plastic instead, has now opened a demonstration plant where they are showing their recycling process can achieve the goals they predicted 18 months ago.
Several obstacles have prevented humanity from getting control of the plastic pollution problem. Mechanical recycling is expensive to run, while market demand for costly recycled plastic is low. Plastic collection around the world is still under 25%, and some plastic polyesters remain without a recycling method.
As GNN reported in 2020, the technology from Carbios solves many of these problems, and they’re confident their demonstration plant will win the support of corporations like PepsiCo, L’Oreal, and Nestle.
At the new Carbios plant in Clermont-Ferrand, a reactor about the size of a cargo van has the capacity to process around 100,000 ground up plastic bottles in just 10-16 hours—that’s around two tons of ground-up PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the most common form of plastic bottle.
It breaks down the polymers—long complicated molecules, into monomers—smaller, simple building blocks, separating the two major components of polyethylene glycol from terephthalic acid, in a matter of hours; exactly as they predicted in 2020.
One major advantage this enzymatic method offers over mechanical recycling is that the end product of plastic monomers is actually far closer to the original material manufacturers use with petroleum to make new bottles, than if they bought chopped-up plastic.
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Using the experience gained at this plant, Carbios will improve the upcoming industrial-size plant forecasted to open 2025.
While their recycled plastic monomers cost more than mechanically-recycled plastic, the method can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, thanks to a reduced reliance on heavy industry, which is attractive to corporations that need to demonstrate their environmental responsibility.
As enzymatic recycling advances as a technology, a chance for more complex plastics like polypropylene, or those found in artificial clothing could eventually be tackled.
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An iconic fixture in any London street scene for decades, the black taxi cab and their extraordinary cabbies are the focal point of a new expedition into Alzheimer’s research.
Cabbies have an incredible knowledge of London streets that seems to confer some protection against Alzheimer’s Disease—this could be be clinically relevant to struggling patients, or those seeking to mitigate their risks.
For those on the outside, it may seem that behind the wheel of the black cabs are just regular people who help move us along to our destinations bit by bit. But hidden within their brilliant brains is a map of London’s streets that for decades has put GPS technology to shame.
“The Knowledge,” as it’s called in the cabbie exam, was established for horse and buggy cabbies in 1865.
It stands among the hardest mental examinations one could ever undergo, as it involves the repeat retrieval from memory of minute details from between 25,000 and 56,000 London streets, depending on who’s reporting, from Trafalgar Square to the tiniest residential lanes.
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University College London and Alzheimer’s Research UK are coming together to study the brains of these cabbies, as it’s found that the hippocampus, master of the brain’s short-term memory and spatial memory systems, is enlarged in the brains of cabbies.
For Alzheimer’s disease, the hippocampus is the first and principal victim of its effects. Furthermore, cabbies’ hippocampi continue to enlarge the more years they put into the job, presenting the hypothesis that perhaps there’s something we can do to replicate the effect in the general population.
“Maybe there’s something very protective about working out your spatial knowledge on a daily basis, like these guys do,” said Research lead, Prof. Hugo Spiers according to Euro Weekly News.
“It may not necessarily be spatial, but just using your brain rather than Google Maps might actually help—in the same way that physical fitness is important.”
At UCL’s department of experimental psychology, Spiers was part of the team which 20 years ago found that, like birds and squirrels, cabbies’ hippocampi gradually got bigger.
Indeed research has found for years that any animal that requires a detailed spatial knowledge of their territory experiences growth in the hippocampus, from voles to pigeons.
Alzheimer’s Disease results from Tau proteins, in particular amyloid-beta, building up around the neurons in the hippocampus. Over time and in layman’s terms, a brain drain occurs as the proteins interfere with the firing of neurons, leading to loss of brain tissue, and a breakdown in the critical functions of the hippocampus.
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Spiers and his team hope to study the “brain gain” which occurs from putting one’s powers of memory through the rigors of The Knowledge.
To glean more information on the mechanisms that cause these gains, Spiers has recruited thirty of London’s cabbies to drive around on their routes hooking up to MRI machine that will allow the researchers to gather real-time observations of the workings within the hippocampus.
“It’s been a joy to help [the research team] with this work and feel that I’m able to use my brain to help scientists combat dementia,” said Robert Lordan, taxi driver, and author of the book The Knowledge: How to Train Your Brain like a London Cabbie.
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Quote of the Day: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt (born 137 years ago)
Photo: by Mateus Campos Felipe
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Researchers studying naturally occurring antibiotics have isolated one which eradicated the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, potentially offering a revolutionary treatment for the pathogen in both humans, and the natural environment.
Hygromycin A, which the scientists found in a screen of soil microbes, was found to clear the infection of B. burgdorferi, the bacteria found in tiny worm-like parasites which cause much of the worst effects of the disease, without harming the rest of the microbiome in live mice and human cells.
A debilitating disease that can put some people out of action for years, Lyme disease affects 500,000 Americans annually, costing an excess of $3 billion in medical care, and much more from lost labor hours. It drives a variety of pathologies, some minor, some major, and is treated principally by non-selective antibiotics which wreck havoc on the beneficial bacterial communities we all carry on our skin and in the gut.
After infecting mice with B. burgdorferi, hygromycin A, was administered twice a day for five days. Using a PCR test which stimulates rapid replication of even single cells, the treatment proved to clear every last trace of the infection.
Furthermore, in vitro tests on human cells found that even at completely unnecessarily-high doses, its therapeutic index was up there with some of the safest over-the-counter medicines.
Hygromycin A targets these worm-like spirochetes, which along with Lyme disease, also cause other diseases. Another spirochete cleared by hygromycin A is called T. pallidum, which not only causes syphilis, but has been a notable recipient of antibiotic resistance.
Broad-spectrum antibiotics, along with killing our beneficial microbes, were shown in the paper to be strongly linked with blooms of harmful bacteria cropping up in the dead spaces left by an antibiotic like amoxicillin or doxycycline. They have also led to antibiotic resistance in many common pathogens.
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By contrast, hygromycin A treatment resulted in a rise of harmless species like lactobacillus.
“Lyme disease is on the rise and, in many locations, limits our ability to enjoy outdoor activities,” the authors write. “A more permanent solution would require eradicating the source of the disease. We show that baits containing hygromycin A clear B. burgdorferi infection in mice, the principal host of the pathogen.”
However the good news didn’t stop there for the team, as they began to reason that because hygromycin A selectively targeted spirochetes, the tiny parasites mentioned earlier, it could be possible to inoculate entire ecosystems against Lyme disease, since hygromycin A is also a naturally-occurring soil microbe, and therefore already has an established place in the terrestrial web of life.
They referenced a study which looked at how a parasite bait containing the common broad-spectrum doxycycline was spread across an area and eradicated the Lyme disease-causing pathogen in 87% of mice, and 94% of ticks.
“This is far above levels required to reduce infection below the… the percentage of infected ticks and mice needed to sustain the infectious cycle in the wild,” the authors note.
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“Doxycycline, however, is an essential part of our shrinking antibiotic arsenal, and spreading it on large territory is unfeasible due to the risk of selecting for resistant micro-organisms. Hygromycin A, with its limited activity against non-spirochetal organisms, would make an ideal reservoir-targeted antibiotic against B. burgdorferi.“
Not only could they be on a path of eliminating Lyme disease in humans, but perhaps in the natural environment as well, which along with numerous other enormous benefits, would allow people in prone areas to wear shorts and t-shirts on a summertime hike again, which merits some celebration.
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Four brave women in South Africa have successfully overturned a set of antiquated marriage laws that denied women equal property rights.
Around 400,000 elderly black women will now have equal access to matrimonial property, thanks to Elizabeth Gumede, Thokozani Maphumulo, Matodzi Ramuhovhi, and Agnes Sithole, and the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in Durban.
Land ownership and property rights are integrally connected to the power of self-determination. This is particularly important for a class of persons historically oppressed by society and the law—elderly black women.
In April, the Constitutional Court struck down a piece of legislation which unfairly discriminates against such women. The Court ruled that a section of the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984 is unconstitutional and invalid to the extent that it maintains and perpetuates discrimination in marriages of black couples entered into before 1988, automatically denying them community property.
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The LRC represented Ms. Agnes Sithole and the Commission for Gender Equality in the case, which vindicated the rights of approximately 400,000 elderly black women in South Africa.
The above case is the third in a trilogy of legal challenges brought by the Legal Resources Centre in the cases Gumede, Ramuhovhi and Sithole, challenging the laws. The affected women belong to a generation of black women who were born, raised and married under apartheid – during a time when laws actively prevented their access to freedom of movement, education, and the right to hold property.
Women bore the laborious and expensive task of applying to a court for redistribution of property if the marriage ended, but the court cases and the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act (RCMA) Amendment Bill recently passed by parliament reverses this discrimination.
In 2008, the LRC represented Ms. Gumede who was married in 1968 which was therefore governed by the apartheid-era law that stipulated the husband to be the owner of all family property. Her divorce would have left Ms. Gumede vulnerable and homeless in her old age.
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In 2017, the LRC represented Ms. Maphumulo, who faced eviction from her home upon her husband’s death.
On 2 March 2021, the RCMA Amendment Bill was passed by parliament to give effect to the Gumede and Ramuhovhi orders. The amendment will ensure that the default position for all customary marriages will be in community of property, unless stipulated otherwise in an antenuptial contract.
Finally, in the Sithole case, 72-year-old housewife Ms. Sithole, the judgment “unpacks societal dynamics such as patriarchy, gender stereotyping, and inflexible application of oppressive cultural practices which perpetuates intersectional discriminatory consequences for black women,” according to a statement from the LRC.
The LRC has relentlessly fought for this financial freedom for historically oppressed women. Access to land and property are essential to securing financial freedom, as well as individual agency and autonomy. The potential of women to own and control land will foster their power of self-determination; eliminate dependence; and enable them to participate meaningfully in society.
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“The trilogy of cases have secured a community of property regime for black women, strengthening their right to security of tenure and financial freedom by ensuring that a husband and his wife/wives equally share the right of ownership and other rights to family property and house property without discrimination.”
(File photo by Nkululeko Mabena)
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Ever picked up a time-saving ‘life hack’ from an online video? Today might be a good day to start because a new study suggests that those little tips and tricks save people almost four hours of effort every week.
That’s according to a survey of 2,002 Americans, 41% of whom have described life hacks to be useful efficiency shortcuts.
One-quarter of those familiar with life hacks even claim having six hours per week to spare after using the shortcuts.
Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Minute Rice, the survey also found that the most popular life hacks were those focused around cooking or the kitchen, with 54% saying they use them regularly.
Cooking hacks that ranked high included batch cooking meals for the whole week (41%), boiling potatoes with skins on for easier removal (40%) and using microwaveable rice (39%).
Six in 10 respondents say they watch life hack videos on the internet, with 42% of people saying they’ve shared their own life hack tips online at some point.
Like all skills, some life hacks require practice; respondents revealed that it takes them an average of three attempts to get a life hack right.
33% have learned tips for make-up, 33% have organized their kitchen better, and another third have found tips to make gardening more enjoyable.
“Anything that gives us time back in our day, from cooking hacks to back-to-school hacks should be embraced. Because when we save time on daily life tasks, we can slow down and enjoy time with those who matter most,” said Erica Larson, Senior Brand Manager of Minute Rice.
30 Most Successful Life Hacks
1) Drying a wet smartphone in rice
2) Adding baking soda to boiling water to help remove egg shells easier
3) Laying a wooden spoon across a pot to keep it from boiling over
4) Cleaning jewelry with toothpaste or Dawn dish soap
5) Cleaning stains with baking soda and vinegar
6) Putting tea bags in shoes to remove the smell
7) Using WD40 to clean the headlights on my car
8) Keeping extra trash bags in every trashcan to keep from having to go get them to replace
9) If vacuum cord keeps coming out of the outlet, push prongs closer together to make it tighter
10) Putting cold water on an onion to stop the tears in your eyes
11) Peeling ginger or hardboiled eggs with a spoon
12) Putting a potato on a broken light bulb to remove it
13) I polish my boots with banana peel and it makes them shinier
14) Adding tomatoes to hot water for easy pealing
15) Transform plastic bottle to flower vases
16) Nail polish on keys to identify them
17) Putting the Saran wrap in the freezer so it doesn’t stick together when you use it.
18) Shaking a hard boiled egg in a mason jar to peel it
19) Using old tissue box to store plastic bags
20) Using a carabineer to attach dog leash to my waste or poop bags to the leash.
21) Using a potato masher to break up frying hamburger
22) Using candle to fix a difficult zipper
23) Using pot lid to get cheese sauce out of packet.
24) Using the spring from my pen, on my phone charger at the stress point
25) Using vinegar/baking soda to polish silver.
26) Using Vinegar to clean shower head
27) Wrapping lettuce in a few pieces of paper towels to keep it fresh longer
28) Removing candle wax using ice cubes
29) Cleaning stains with lemon and vinegar
30) “I always use unflavored string floss to slice food items like block cheese, cakes, and dough like homemade cinnamon rolls. It’s a lot cleaner and more precise. It doesn’t tear up the food and makes a very nice presentation, especially for guests. I actually keep floss in my kitchen for this purpose.”
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America, I am sending you good wishes from a small Bangladeshi village on the 20th anniversary of your great tragedy. I knew nothing about you before 2001, when 9/11 shook you, and turned the world around. Twenty years later, I know much more about you—your people, and history—and want to say thank you.
I first heard about America when I was in junior high school. Our geography teacher showed us a world map, his finger stopped on the line that read USA. “This is America,” he said. We were curious why the teacher mentioned specifically ‘America,’ but he did not explain it to us any further.
Then in 2001, when I was about to finish the 10th grade, we watched the horror of 9/11 on a black and white TV in our village, and I saw America for the first time. While watching the huge plume of smoke and the towers falling down, I saw the Americans. It was the first time I heard them speak, something compelled me to speak like them and I started learning English.
We had no satellite television channels other than the government run TV station. We had no paved roads and electricity let alone internet, so learning English was tough.
After I found a radio set with my uncle, I tried to connect it with some English broadcasting channels. Thus, I discovered Voice of America. By listening to VOA’s ‘Learning English’ programs, I developed my English a bit.
I wrote a letter to VOA asking for some books. They sent me some booklets and magazines and a beautiful photo of Washington DC. I bought some grammar books and started reading English dailies in Bangladesh. As my English developed, I started to learn about America and its people.
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In 2010, our village was electrified. There were color TV sets with multiple channels. I bought a smartphone and connected with the internet provided by a phone company. I opened a Facebook account and tried to reach over to the Americans. Although many of them did not respond, some were friendly and answered me, including a Virginian.
My new Virginia friend and his kindhearted wife sent me a great many books and small gifts. The gifts were often related to American history, culture, and literature. The books played a vital role in my life. I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which helped me learn of the American Civil War.
The couple included some fine works of great American writers, including Washington Irving and John Steinbeck. While reading The Grapes of Wrath I felt like I was moving with the Joad family to California. That Steinbeck story added another American history lesson to my list—the Great Depression. I posted some of my already-learned history notes in a Facebook Group and reached out to some more Americans.
I corresponded with my Texas friend though Facebook Messenger. He told me about the Texas-Mexico war at the Alamo. I came to know that everything is BIG in Texas through photos he sent me. Rodeos, ranchos, and rattlesnakes were part of our discussion almost every day.
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He also sent me books, magazines, pens, and school stationery that enriched my knowledge about cowboy culture. When I hold the colorful pens, I feel a sense of my own American dream while studying, teaching, and writing stories about his country.
Then, I moved to California virtually, when I met a friend from the ‘Grizzly Bear State’. From the Spanish settlers to the gold rush, my California friend brought me more US history lessons. Through our conversations, I discovered a wild America, far from Bangladesh. He introduced me to the giant Sequoia forests, Death Valley National Park, roadrunners, California quail, and the sun and surf of the beaches.
I was unstoppable and met more Americans. One of them served in the U.S. Army. My Army friend brought me world history—the Vietnam War, Korean War, Gulf War, Cuban missile crisis, and more. He was stationed in Iraq during the war there. We corresponded about his experience fighting for his country, while leaving everybody back on the US shores. It seemed the life of a soldier is very hard.
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If America did not exist, I would not be who I am today. Now, from my tiny village, I can explore the American wilderness, walk the trails among sequoias, and argue with my friends about why Native Americans are called Indians. Now I understand Martin Luther King Jr.’s role during the civil rights movement and can share my thoughts about him with other people around the world.
I want to thank all these good citizens who brought America—its people, culture, and history—to me here in Bangladesh. I thank you very much, dear friends, and thank you, America!
Rezaul Karim Reza is a freelance writer based in Rangpur, Bangladesh, whose works have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Reader’s Digest, and History Is Now Magazine.
(Edited from the original essay published in the CS Monitor)
Quote of the Day: “The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood.” – Agatha Christie
Photo: by Sharon McCutcheon
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)
Here is your weekly horoscope…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week beginning October 8, 2021
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
“Some people are crazy drunk on rotgut sobriety,” wrote aphorist Daniel Liebert. I trust you’re not one of them. But if you are, I beg you to change your habits during the next three weeks. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you have a heavenly mandate to seek more than the usual amounts of whimsical ebullience, sweet diversions, uplifting obsessions, and holy amusements. Your health and success in the coming months require you to enjoy a period of concentrated joy and fun now. Be imaginative and innovative in your quest for zest.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Scottish Poet Laureate Jackie Kay, born under the sign of Scorpio, writes, “It used to be that privacy came naturally to everybody and that we understood implicitly what kind of things a person might like to keep private. Now somebody has torn up the rule book on privacy and there’s a kind of free fall and free for all and few people naturally know how to guard this precious thing, privacy.” The coming weeks will be a good time for you to investigate this subject, Scorpio—to take it more seriously than you have before. In the process, I hope you will identify what’s truly important for you to keep confidential and protected, and then initiate the necessary adjustments. (PS: Please feel no guilt or embarrassment about your desire to have secrets!)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
“All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretense that pain is the proper price of any good thing,” wrote feisty author Rebecca West (1892–1983). I am very happy to report that your current torrent of good things will NOT require you to pay the price of pain. On the contrary, I expect that your phase of grace and luck will teach you how to cultivate even more grace and luck; it will inspire you to be generous in ways that bring generosity coming back your way. As articulated by ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, here’s the operative principle: “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
“If you don’t ask, the answer is always no,” declares author Nora Roberts. In that spirit and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to be bold and lucid about asking for what you want in the coming weeks. In addition, I encourage you to ask many probing questions so as to ferret out the best ways to get what you want. If you are skilled in carrying out this strategy, you will be a winsome blend of receptivity and aggressiveness, innocent humility and understated confidence. And that will be crucial in your campaign to get exactly what you want.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
“Few persons enjoy real liberty,” wrote poet Alfred de Musset. “We are all slaves to ideas or habits.” That’s the bad news. The good news is that October is Supercharge Your Freedom Month for you Aquarians. I invite you to use all your ingenuity to deepen, augment, and refine your drive for liberation. What could you do to escape the numbness of the routine? How might you diminish the hold of limiting beliefs and inhibiting patterns? What shrunken expectations are impinging on your motivational verve? Life is blessing you with the opportunity to celebrate and cultivate what novelist Tim Tharp calls “the spectacular now.” Be a cheerful, magnanimous freedom fighter.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
The brilliant Piscean composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) wrote, “I wish I could throw off the thoughts that poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.” What?! That’s crazy! If he had been brave enough and willful enough to stop taking pleasure in indulging his toxic thoughts, they might have lost their power to demoralize him. With this in mind, I’m asking you to investigate whether you, like Chopin, ever get a bit of secret excitement from undermining your own joy and success. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to dissolve that bad habit.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Aries poet Anna Kamieńska said her soul didn’t emanate light. It was filled with “bright darkness.” I suspect that description may apply to you in the coming weeks. Bright darkness will be one of your primary qualities. And that’s a good thing! You may not be a beacon of shiny cheer, but you will illuminate the shadows and secrets. You will bring deeper awareness to hidden agendas and sins of omission. You will see, and help others to see, what has been missing in situations that lack transparency. Congratulations in advance!
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
“There is something truly restorative, finally comforting, in coming to the end of an illusion—a false hope.” So declared author Sue Miller, and now I’m sharing it with you, Taurus—just in time for the end of at least one of your illusions. (Could be two, even three.) I hope your misconceptions or misaligned fantasies will serve you well as they decay and dissolve. I trust they will be excellent fertilizer, helping you grow inspired visions that guide your future success. My prediction: You will soon know more about what isn’t real, which will boost your ability to evaluate what is real.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini writes, “People mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they’re afraid of—what they don’t want.” Is that true for you, Gemini? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to meditate on that question. And if you find you’re motivated to live your life more out of fear than out of love, I urge you to take strenuous action to change that situation! Make sure love is at least 51 percent and fear no more than 49 percent. I believe you can do much better than that, though. Aim for 75 percent love!
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.” Oglala Lakota medicine man Black Elk said that, and now I’m passing it on to you. It’s not always the case that dreams are wiser than waking, of course, but I suspect they will be for you in the coming weeks. The adventures you experience while you’re sleeping could provide crucial clues to inform your waking-life decisions. They should help you tune into resources and influences that will guide you during the coming months. And now I will make a bold prediction: that your dreams will change your brain chemistry in ways that enable you to see truths that until now have been invisible or unavailable. (PS: I encourage you to also be alert for intriguing insights and fantasies that well up when you’re tired or lounging around.)
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
“Don’t hope more than you’re willing to work,” advises author Rita Mae Brown. So let me ask you, Leo: How hard are you willing to work to make your dreams come true, create your ideal life, and become the person you’d love to be? When you answer that question honestly, you’ll know exactly how much hope you have earned the right to foster. I’m pleased to inform you that the coming weeks will be a favorable time to upgrade your commitment to the work and therefore deepen your right to hope.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
“To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.” This shrewd advice comes from author bell hooks. I think it should be at the heart of your process in the coming days. Why? Because you now have an extraordinary potential to dream up creative innovations that acknowledge your limitations but also transcend those limitations. You have extra power available to harness your fantasies and instigate practical changes.
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)
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An incredible dog whose owner didn’t know he was blind for over nine months has been declared a “medical mystery” by a veterinary expert.
Border Collie Dave “never puts a foot wrong” and can even navigate around puddles despite his blindness—leaving vets completely baffled.
Jane Downes, 69, says that her pooch has always come when called and happily plays with other dogs despite his undeveloped retinas leaving him completely blind.
Believed to be five or seven years old, Dave had been with Jane for almost a year before she made the discovery.
“No one’s got any answers. It’s just a conundrum and really strange.”
“He’s a blind dog that can see. Maybe it’s a sixth sense, who knows?”
Jane bought Dave from an animal rescue centre in February 2020, when no issues were raised regarding his sight—even after a check-up at the local vet.
Jane, from Waterbeach, Cambs, said, “He jumped into the back of the car and I brought him home.”
“On a couple of occasions he walked into things but I put that down to him being a sheepdog who more than likely lived in a barn rather than a house.”
When Dave stumbled over a step at a pet shop in Cambridge, the owner suggested to Jane that her dog might be blind, so she took him to a specialist vet.
Turns out, Dave had been sightless from birth.
After the revelation, Jane called on the help of Cambridge University’s David Williams, a top veterinary ophthalmologist, who organized two obstacle course challenges for Dave.
He told a local newspaper: “I see a lot of blind dogs and they all bump into objects in a way that Dave didn’t—so at present he is a medical mystery. Just because I’ve been doing this for 33 years, it doesn’t mean I’ve seen everything, and this I can’t explain.”
LOOK: Man Gives His Terminally-Ill Dog One Last Walk Up Their Beloved Mountain in a Wheelbarrow (PHOTOS)
Dave now enjoys running around at home with his new brother Sammy, a two-year-old Border Collie, who joined the family last year.
“He chases other dogs around, even though he can’t see them,” says Jane.
“He had everyone fooled—even me as his owner I was fooled for nine months.”
WATCH the video…
Your Friends Won’t Be Able to See This—Until you SHARE it on Social Media…
Next week, McDonald’s is making school day mornings a little brighter for educators and showing their appreciation with a free breakfast Thank You Meal.
Teachers, administrators or school staff can simply head to any participating McDonald’s during breakfast hours from Oct. 11-15 and show a valid work ID for a free breakfast.
“Together with our Owner/Operators, we’re proud to serve the people who make our communities a better place, and this is an important time to say thank you to some of our everyday heroes,” said Joe Erlinger, President, McDonald’s USA. “We were honored to give away 12 million free Thank You Meals to first responders and healthcare workers last year and now, with educators going above and beyond, we’re excited to recognize them in a way only McDonald’s can.”
They can get one Thank You Meal per day, which comes with an entrée breakfast sandwich—either an Egg McMuffin, a Bacon, Egg and Cheese or Sausage Biscuit—and also hash browns, with a hot or iced coffee or soft drink.
RELATED: McDonald’s Gives a New Car—And Golden Arches—to Family Whose Autistic Son Draws Them Continuously
Last year McDonald’s launched the “Thank You Meal” program to recognize first responders and healthcare workers at the height of the pandemic. This year, they wanted to honor another essential group “as a small token of appreciation”.
“As a former teacher, this Thank You Meal means the world to me, and I know it will touch my customers and my employees,” said Stefanie Cabrera Bentancourt, a McDonald’s Owner/Operator in Miami, Florida. “Educators are the backbone of our communities. They’ve done so much for us, and it’s an honor to join my fellow Owner/Operators across the country to celebrate them.”
They are also inviting the public to honor a special educator in their lives, by sharing on Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram how they inspired you by using #ThankYouMeal through Oct. 15.
Local Owner/Operators will then be surprising some of the teachers with a breakfast delivery to their school.
MORE: McDonald’s Breaks New Ground With Returnable, Reusable Coffee Cups
“We’ll celebrate select educators across the country in big and small ways,” said a company statement that mentioned how they had donated supplies and financial help in the past.
SHARE This on Social Media With Educators So They Can Get a Free Breakfast…
A brand of salami known as Galileo is celebrating 75 years of making the cured meats by welcoming salami fans into their family with a chance to win a unique culinary experience in a seaside region of Italy.
But don’t worry, you don’t have to speak Italian.
All you have to do is simply share a photo of yourself on Instagram using the hashtags #GalileoFamily and #Sweepstakes and tag @GalileoSalame.
If you follow the rules of the contest, you are automatically entered for a chance to win a weeklong trip for two to Italy to explore the history and culinary riches of the seaside region of Le Marche, known for its agricultural products, vegetables, meats, grapes, olives and truffle hunting.
“For the better part of a century, we’ve been curing authentic Italian salame with the idea of family and tradition,” said Jeremy Kross, Brand Manager at Galileo, a company that was started in 1945 by Frank Sorba in San Francisco. “The ‘Welcome to the Family’ program celebrates our Italian heritage and, of course, the deliciousness of salame.”
The winners will learn about the history of the Galileo brand and explore incredible destinations there like Ancona, a city and seaport that sits along Italy’s Adriatic coast; Mount Conero, known as a “small piece of heaven” on the Adriatic Sea with some of the clearest water; and finally, San Marino, said to be the world’s oldest surviving republic.
While in Sant’Angelo in Vado, the winners will visit La Tavola Marche, a unique hands-on culinary experience where guests can immerse themselves in Italian culture and food. The company says that crafting Italian meats in the Bay Area where the temperate climate is like that of northern Italy, makes it the ideal location in America to cure salami.
There’s no purchase necessary, but you do need a public Instagram account. Simply post an Instagram photo of yourself and use the hashtags #GalileoFamily and #Sweepstakes and tag @GalileoSalame. Don’t use the likeness of any famous person, though, as it states in the official rules here.
The trip for two will last for seven days, six nights, and is valued at $7,500 U.S. The contest ends on October 21, after which they will do a random drawing to determine the winner.
RELATED: A Town Near Rome is Selling Old Homes for $1, a Trend Across Italy in Many Beautiful Villages
Give Your Friends the Chance to Win A Trip to Italy By Sharing On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “Let the disappointments pass. Let the laughter fill your glass.” – Jackson Browne (turns 73 today)
Photo: by Wil Stewart
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
An enormous amount of the world’s emissions are generated by our food systems, so an agricultural technology firm in Lithuania moved to tackle the largest definitive source by introducing the world’s first totally-green tractor.
Big engines, massive torque, big heavy tires, and hardly ever leaving third gear means fossil fuels from farm machinery are a massive contributor to agricultural emissions, and AUGA Group’s biomethane-electric hybrid tractor will go a long way towards reducing them.
AUGA is Europe’s largest vertically integrated organic food producer, and the AUGA M1 is the first of its kind, designed as a hybrid to ensure that farmers can run from sunup to sundown.
“Three years ago, when we first calculated our emissions, we saw that as much as 30 per cent of them come from the use of fossil fuels on farms,” stated AUGA CEO Kęstutis Juščius.
“There were simply no solutions to change it. That is why we have taken the lead in developing technologies that will allow us to create a new standard for sustainable agriculture and drastically reduce pollution throughout the food value chain. The first result of this work is a biomethane and electric tractor.”
Rather than run only on biomethane as other green tractors, the addition of an electric motor powered by internal combustion from the biomethane and battery storage to save power during low-demand tasks, allows for many hours of additional use.
Biomethane was specifically targeted as a desired fuel source as it’s one of the greenest biofuels. The cool part about it is that it’s generated from livestock waste which farmers may need to dispose of. Livestock waste is a large contributor of methane: a more potent, but largely harmless greenhouse gas.
RELATED: Irrigation System Talks to Plants to Find Out When they Need Water — Cutting Water Use by 30-50%
One of the reasons it’s largely harmless is that unlike CO2, if one reduces methane emissions by an amount, say 10,000 tons, the concentrations of methane in the atmosphere immediately shift to reflect that reduction, while a similar reduction in CO2 has no effect whatsoever on its atmospheric greenhouse concentrations.
Therefore by turning the manure into biomethane fuel, it’s having a direct pound for pound reduction in emissions.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of the biomethane fuel, the M1 is designed to accommodate larger, specialized canisters, which the company offers a refueling service for.
The tractor is set to enter production in its native Lithuania next year and will come with a top speed of around eight miles per hour. Running for twelve hours, it produces net zero emissions, while just one M1 on a farm will reduce a farmer’s carbon footprint by 100 tons per year.
MORE: In World First, Top Beef Supplier Approves Methane-Busting Feed Additive That Reduces Gas by 55%
“Our invention makes it possible to create a wide range of tractor applications and make it accessible to all farmers who want to work sustainably,” added Juščius. “We are not developing technology just to solve our own emissions and deliver on the promise of becoming a CO2-neutral company by 2030. Our goal is bigger—we will strive to make this tractor and other technologies that are still being developed available to farmers all over the world and help solve the global problem of pollution in the agricultural sector.”
(WATCH the video about this story below.)
FARM OUT the Good News to Your Mates…
While quilting bees generally conjure images of grandmas piecing together scraps of fabric to create family heirlooms for future generations, crafting the colorful, cozy bed covers has become an outlet for incarcerated men not only to express their creativity but to give something positive back to the communities from which they came.
Over the past 10 years, more than 2,000 personalized quilts assembled by the inmates of Missouri’s South Central Correctional Facility have been donated to children in the state’s foster care system or auctioned off to fund local charitable organizations.
“When I learned that I could help bring a smile to a child’s face, I was all in,” Fred Brown said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Right now, I’m working on a puppy quilt that will go to a 13-year-old boy. I don’t know anything about him, but I have a feeling he’s going to love this quilt.”
William White, an upholsterer by trade, felt a special affinity for the project and joined soon after he began serving his sentence in 2015. Along with his other prison chores, White volunteers to spend seven hours a day, five days a week quilting with his peers.
“The guys were making these beautiful quilts to give away to foster kids, and I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of,” he told WaPo. “I have six kids, and sewing had always been my passion. And now, here was a way for me to give back.”
MORE: Baking Bad: Ex-Cons Are Mentored as Bakers and Now Their Bread is in the Best Restaurants
Based on the precept of “restorative justice” which stresses rehabilitation rather than punishment, according to the group’s coordinator, case manager Joe Satterfield, keeping the prisoners’ minds and hearts engaged while letting them feel like they’re making useful contributions to the community has been a game-changer, even for those who may spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
“You can see a change in their attitude, Satterfield told NPR’s St. Louis affiliate. “A light flips on like, Oh, this is a new avenue. I can actually be a part of something.”
Knowing firsthand the feeling of being forgotten by society, the inmates who participate in the quilting circle strive to personalize each quilt for foster care kids to let them know someone cares; that they’re not “throwaways.”
“You see the names of these kids in foster care; you see a 1-year-old or 2-year-old, and it kind of breaks your heart,” volunteer Rod Harney, who learned to sew in a seventh-grade Home Economics class told NPR. “But that lets us know we’re human still. You can’t express enough how it feels to do it.”
“Even though I’m incarcerated,” William White said, “I can still do something beautiful.”
RELATED: Former Prisoners Turn Waste Into Beautiful Furniture, Re-Building Their Lives At the Same Time
The South Central Correctional Facility quilting program relies on donated fabric and other sewing items. If you’re interested in learning more or making a donation, reach out to Joe Satterfield at [email protected].
RELEASE the Good News So Others Can Know and Share It Too…
It’s almost time to look up, because the Orionids are coming to the Northern Hemisphere from October 16-24.
You’ll be able to see the shooting stars without the need for a telescope or binoculars. But to see them at their very best, you’ll want to wake up early: from 4:00-5:00 A.M Daylight Savings Time, according to Farmer’s Almanac, you should be able to see anything from 10 to over 30 meteors each hour.
What is it, precisely, that you’re watching in the night sky? That’d be trails of cosmic dust from Halley’s Comet sparking up against Earth’s atmosphere at speeds fasters than forty miles per second.
And the hours before dawn are when, “Earth encounters the densest part of Halley’s debris stream,” NASA explains.
Peaking on the 21st, the meteor shower will appear to radiate from the Orion constellation in the southwestern sky.
MORE: 900-Year-old Mystery That Puzzled Stargazers is Now Solved – It’s A ‘Zombie’ Star
Near the Orionids’ peak, there’ll be a Full Hunter’s Moon brightening the night up a little too much for eager meteor watchers.
Nevertheless, if you have a Dark Sky Preserve near you, or just have a favorite dark patch in the city—get the blankets and flasks of hot tea ready, and check out one of the astronomy highlights of the year.
LET This Starry Story Sparkle in More News Feeds…
